


Hell, or something like

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 18:13:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel knew what hell was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell, or something like

Castiel knew what hell was.

If he had doubted it even a little before, if he had ever questioned that he would come to know the true depth and weight of what hell was, he held absolute conviction that he knew what hell was now.

It wasn’t lakes of burning fire or laughing devils with pitch forks or being roasted alive.

No, hell was freezing cold. Hell was brutal in it’s ability to rob all hope and sense of time. Hell was efficient in it’s simple tortures.

Hell was ice fishing in a shack in northern Michigan with his girlfriend’s father.

Azazel watched him with those sharp eyes; they were such a pale color brown that in certain light Castiel swore they looked yellow and it did nothing to make Azazel any less creepy. Meg’s father really, really put him on edge. And it wasn’t just because he could probably string Castiel up and gut him and make the evidence look like a hunting accident. Actually, that had a lot to do with it.

The silence was somehow even worse than the overt warnings that Azazel used to make. Azazel used to state casual offhand remarks threatening various parts of Castiel’s personhood. After a few months, Meg must have convinced him to lay off. The staring was a different kind of threat though. Now Castiel didn’t know what Azazel was thinking about cutting off. It was disconcerting.

Castiel could hear the wind whistling and tearing at the worn wood siding of the shack. Azazel watched him. Castiel watched the fishing line bobbing in the little hole in the thick ice.

Castiel could feel the snot in his nose freezing. He was pretty sure he had lost all sensation in his hands, and quite possibly would lose the use of his fingers shortly too. He was certain that his testicles had receded further in to his body than they had in over a decade. And yet he sat still. Perfectly still. And waited. Petrified.

Let’s take a vacation honey, she had said. My father has a nice cabin up on the lake, she crooned. I want to get away from the city, she distracted him with a hand down his pants.

A vacation. Right. Not a romantic having sex by the fire in a cabin vacation. Oh, no. This was supposed to be a family vacation. This was supposed to be a ‘please try and bond with my father’ vacation. Tom was supposed to come, apparently, as a buffer of sorts between Castiel and Azazel. He had cancelled. For dubious reasons.

After hours of silent, frigid, numb torture they had actually managed to catch three fish. What the hell fish were still doing swimming around under there Castiel had no clue. But he silently thanked God when Azazel stood and coughed, saying they had enough for dinner and should pack it in.

Castiel hunched and waddled his way from the shack back to the cabin, dragging supplies with him. He was fairly certain that Azazel did not deem him worthy of his daughter because Castiel was not the rugged manly outdoorsman that Azazel was. Castiel had lived in the city his whole life, he had a nice comfortable office job, and he did not have calluses on his hands. Azazel was, in his opinion, full of traditionalist sexist archaic horse shit, but he would never ever say that to the man - or Meg, who adored her father.

He could have wept with joy when they trundled through the cabin door, stomping off snow at the mat and passing things over to Meg, who was smiling at them bundled in her nice warm sweater and jeans and slippers.

“Daddy, Cas, looks like a good haul, did you have a good time?”

Castiel glared at her, focusing all his energy in to pleading that she not ask him to repeat this experience ever again in his life.

Azazel grunted. “This shifty little bugger kept moving, being all noisy, must of scared off the fish.”

Meg piled the equipment on the big solid wood table in the middle of the kitchen, and took the fish from them over to the deep porcelain sink. “But these ones look really good, why don’t I get dinner started. There’s coffee on for you guys too.”

Azazel, already stripped out of his thick coat, gloves and shoes, padded over to Meg where she was gutting the fish and kissed the top of her head. “Thanks pumpkin.”

She beamed a wide smile at him and nudged him over towards the coffee pot with her elbow.

Castiel huffed as he locked the door behind him and struggled to pry off his shoes with numb fingers. Yep, that was it, they were never going to work again.

Castiel sighed, watching his girlfriend at the sink, her hands red with blood after chopping off the heads, ripping guts and spines out of the fish, deftly maneuvering the sharp knife to pull them apart and clean them. She was a wild thing, raised on the edges of the mountains in a small town, taught how to hunt and scavenge. All the stories of her childhood that she’d shared with him were filled with dirt and sunlight, scraped knees and scraping by.

He still wasn’t sure why she’d moved to the city for college. She could have had a comfortable small town life, she liked the area well enough and she was always complaining about missing the forests and the lakes up here. Castiel for one was a modern man. He liked air conditioning, electricity, cell phones. They really weren’t from the same sort of world.

Meg was skinning the fish and setting neat filets aside, scooping the guts out of the sink. She raised her eyebrows at him, the quirk of her lips quietly asking ‘that wasn’t so bad was it’. God her ass looked so good in those jeans. Castiel rolled his stiff shoulders and rubbed his hands together as he tentatively shuffled forward towards her. As soon as a kiss had been pressed to her cheek, a muffled cough was heard across the room where Azazel was glaring at them over his coffee.

“Have some coffee Cas, dinner’ll be ready before you know it.”

“Thank you Meg. I fear for my fingers, they may never return to full functionality again.”

She bumped her hip against him while he brought down a mug from the cupboard, whispering quietly into the space between them, “I’m sure you’re fingers are fine, but I’ve got somewhere you can warm them up later.”

Castiel darted a gaze sideways to her father. No matter if Meg was usually the one to get up to mischief, he was the one to bear the brunt of her father’s disapproval.

“This is a quite tiny cabin.”

“What, the shack not romantic enough for you city boy?”

“Oh, no, your father teases me enough, please.”

Meg laughed, a boisterous lovely sound, rinsing off her hands.

Castiel decided that he could endure hell, he could endure primitive camping trips and ice fishing and even white water rafting - he wouldn’t mind suffering a little for it - as long as he could hear that laugh at the end of the day.


End file.
